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I’m folding up chairs because that’s what you do after eating lunch at church.

Or at least until you run into Harry.

Harry stops my work. He tells me that he and his wife, Margaret, have been praying for our family. They’ve heard something of the story surrounding our move to Winnipeg, but now Harry, 82, has some stories he wants to share with me. And he’s a much better storyteller.

Like this:

on this dayin Winnipegeven polar bearswatch us from Broadway,and we sit and loveon these historic stepsleading up to our Hotel Fort Garry,and hold, for a time,icy bottles of cream soda andthe condensation and ringsdrive us mad, with love,and people hit their brakesand honk at us,smiling at your wedding dress,here in the northern sunlight,but then we had to leave itin your parents’ basement, for a

time to cross

a country and then a seaof wild rye and nodding needlesand the cold concreteat the border station, with itserect black uniforms, silversunglasses andlatex fingers and,the prairie wind howls,whipsat the bare skin of our heart,raised today like a flagbetween two countries.

Oh, Canada burns like a cardinal against our snow.

and so we roar and stompand leave one paw-printof redin our snowand then go to bedand wait for the visiblelight to changeto faith, some smoldering,infrared glow.

Whitney Houston is gone. But I remember when she was alive in my family’s kitchen.As a boy, I was awestruck by the power of a Sony radio. My parents kept it high on a shelf, up next to all those red and yellow cookbooks and the potted green ivy.

Once I reached a certain age, I was allowed to touch the radio. My fingers stroked its walnut wood casing. I experimented with those clockwise and counterclockwise movements, exploring a world that went far beyond my small Indiana college town.

There, in the kitchen while helping my mom with the dishes, I heard a voice hit a frequency of celebration that only a soul lost and then found could reach.

Surrounded by the toil of clean and dirty dishes, I fell in love with The Voice.

I met Pastor Gary Miller last week at a nearby coffee shop. Isaiah 30 came up. He said he would be preaching on it next Sunday. That might be why our conversation centered around the battle imagery.

Either way, we gathered around a kind of flagpole, confessing our rebellion and oppression.

We talked about the difficult paths. Those behind us. And those ahead.

Here, Gary turns and leans his back against the brick wall. His white hair is long, tousled over like a prophet’s. He keeps that dark jacket on, but not because he’s anxious to leave. He simply sat down and wore what he came here wearing.

James runs past the front door of our church to find his coat. He sort of skids when he looks up and sees Jesus standing outside the tomb.

James slows, then stops, and pivots long enough to find the holes in the feet, and the ones at the wrists. He soaks up the image in the painting, quietly, without the help of adults. And then he’s off running again.